for all the times you spent running part 2

[catskilt]

it isn't that yamapi's never thought about ryo in that way.

it's only that there's so much in between them - history, friendship, hardship cigarette smoke in drafty fire exits, skin and sweat and blood, pulsing, coursing, alive, human underneath layers of their affectations and false pretenses - that yamapi doesn't think there's any room for something as huge as this.

there are memories, moments numbering infinity.

on the top of yamapi's head:

it was august and the sun had already burnt ryo's skin a shade darker. their knees bared and skinned, grass-stained and freckled in the heat jutted out proudly from their perch atop a picnic table. popsicles melted in their wrappers in this heat and the nearest swimming pool was saturated with kids who all had the same idea and urine-warmed water.

yamapi throws an apple straight up into the sky; the polished red sphere blots out the sun for a moment.

the bright red surface of the picnic table was rough and grainy under yamapi's palms, but the trees in the park afforded enough coolness in the blistering afternoon. they laid next to each other, lengthwise along the table, the lines of their arms touching until the additional body heat became too much and they had to pull away.

ryo was generous with his apologies that day, a freak occurrence in the many years yamapi has known him. he apologized for the ruined ice lollies, the lack of sweets in his refrigerator, the hot air being whirled around by the electric fan in his house. ryo apologized for the weather and yamapi thought that was a dumb thing to apologize for. he apologized for asking yamapi over for the holidays and yamapi started, anchoring himself on his elbows to sit up and face ryo.

"idiot, i wanted to come over," yamapi decided that ryo must be delirious with heat. "tokyo's so boring in the summer with its working air conditioners and unmelted ice cream."

ryo cracked an eye open at yamapi, a faint shadow of the confidence shattering glares ryo would one day be able to summon.

"then i guess i'm not sorry then."

"course not. here."

yamapi tossed him the apple, made it dificult for him to catch it. ryo almost fell of the bench reaching for it. he took a huge bite out of it to spite yamapi.

the polished red surface broke easily under ryo's teeth, juice sluicing down ryo's wrist before he caught them with the pointed tip of his tongue. wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he threw the apple back to yamapi who caught it with ease.

he took a bite, continuing the excavation already begun by ryo.

they chewed in contemplative silence, the mechanical grind of their teeth working through the fleshy pome; the only movement: the clockwork of their jaws and the transfer back and forth of a slowly diminishing apple.

by the time they reached its core, their fingers were sticky and their pulses were slow, beats lumbering through their bodies as the afternoon sun set and took their energy with it. they laid boneless on top of the picnic table, watching as the sun disseminated its rays in variegated hues in its last gasp attempt to set the world alight before it fell off the edge of the world. the apple core was cold and moist in yamapi's hand.

"let's go home?" ryo asked, letting a yawn sift through his fingers.

"yeah."

they walked home together, knees bumping and bruising as they slid off the picnic table and collided. the evening was cooler than the day and the wind blew in all the in between spaces, chilling the air. as an instinctive response, they walked closer together, matched the lengths of their steps to one another. the moon low in the air, the stars above it seemed to shine brighter; the shadows on the ground like obscuring spotlights. ryo and yamapi walked together in companionable silence. if their hands brushed together occasionally, they put it down to the stickiness of their fingers.

home, ryo said. as they reached the front door to ryo's house, yamapi thought about osaka and the idea of home.

"well, come on," ryo said, as he unlocked the door. "don't tell about the apple, okay? mom'll be mad if she knows we ate before dinner."

yamapi stared at ryo as he held the door open. he stared and he simply thought yes, this could be it.

-

to yamapi's surprise, ryo calls for a one-on-one practice with him. he finds him waiting in the practice room, back against the the floor-length mirror, staring into space resolutely until yamapi enters the room. ryo's gaze immediately snaps to yamapi and yamapi is unnerved at the renewed unfamiliarity of it.

"from where do you want to start?" yamapi asks, fiddling with the sound system.

ryo is up on his feet. "go out with me."

yamapi pauses, tells himself that he's been expecting it, but he can't keep the flush of blood, of heat from coloring his face.

"yeah, that would be a good place to start."

"wait. what. what?" ryo fumbles and stutters, but it's the most steadfast on his feet that yamapi's seen him in a while.

"i said yes."

"yeah, but." there's something in ryo's stare, heavy-lidded and loaded, something like a resilient film of hope making him myopic, blind to the blurring uncertainty that dots his line of sight. yamapi can't see it either.

"but what?" yamapi tilts his head to one side, lips twisting in a pout, coy. "you don't want to go out with me, ryo-chan?"

ryo's always had this tendency to deal in absolutes, be reckless in the face of everything he's never understood. yamapi's never questioned that approach to life, but he's never understood it either. it's only now that ryo's visibly weighing things in his mind, scales tipping against the magnitude of what all of this could mean, tripping over all the ways this could have happened that yamapi can see the value of thinking later and damning the consequences. yamapi wonders if ryo is disappointed in the reality, this inauspicious start, wonders how someone he's always thought of as unflinching could falter when yamapi needed him not to.

(if there was a time for ryo to be reckless, it would be now. yamapi doesn't think he'd have enough sense for the both of them.)

ryo shifts closer and the change is imperceptible, with the feet of dance floor still in between them, but it's a step forward and a step towards yamapi and that makes all the difference; it makes the world to yamapi.

"friday. eight. anywhere you like. i'll make reservations." ryo says, voice vacillating, but quietly persistent.

yamapi nods.

afterwards, their professionalism compels them to actually start practicing. as two of johnny's top idols, there's still nothing that takes precedence over this job, this life. their steps are in sync, the music pulses its beats through their bodies, tugging their limbs into position by invisible tethers. it's possible that yamapi should have thought about this more, contemplated the metaphorical pull that his job has on his life and how he is contractually obligated to never let this happen. as their routine finally comes together, yamapi is more and more convinced that this is probably a mistake. still, he tells himself, this could be a mistake worth making.

-

it's friday and everything skews itself so completely off course that a superstitious man would take it as a portent of a misfiring, miscalculated romance. but ryo nishikido was the kind of kid who chased black cats around the street, cut his toenails at night and didn't think that it had anything to do with how much he loved his mother. that and he spent the last three days convincing himself that he and pi were meant to be. fucking destined for each other, because ryo nishikido would not lose his straight for anything less than that.

it's friday and the day off yamapi promised he'd have hasn't materialized, because he has to attend his drama's crank-up. he calls ryo that morning, says sorry and actually sounds apologetic when he says that he'll barely make it in time for a very late dinner. yamapi's voice crackles as their connection stretches from ryo's apartment to whatever obscure location yamapi happens to be filming at, but ryo can always see the fatigue in the crookedness of yamapi's smile, feel the restlessness in his jiggling knee, and he can hear the regret in the distorted inflections of his voice.

so he says see you later and i'll be waiting and yes, we're still having this date thing. ryo doesn't tell him about the reservations he managed to wrangle from a fancy italian place. he doesn't tell him that they serve the best putanesca in town or that he knows he'll love their panna cotta. even though they do and that he's absolutely certain. he doesn't say that he'll miss him either or that he's angry. just because he won't and he isn't. ryo wonders for a moment if he's having an existential mid-life crises a decade in advance or if losing your straight means that you lose your edge too. then he concludes that he's only like this when it comes to yamapi and perhaps that is the most worrying thought of all.

ryo spends the day half-dressed and uncombed. he thinks about the date for approximately ten seconds then decides yamapi isn't worth the fuss of paying a restaurant to stay open past their closing time, and that, okay, maybe he is a bit pissed off. he eases that feeling into the joints of his shoulders, rotates it around until it makes him feel nice and warm and manly again.

the past few days had been a whirlwind of expectation built upon expectation, and with jin weighing in on effective seduction stratagems, massu proving himself to be a connoisseur of tokyo's culinary scene, and shige recommending fucking poetry, ryo's grip on reality had begun to flicker and warp into something that eerily resembled a bad shoujo manga.

it's good to feel nice and pissed off again, because for the first time these past couple of days, ryo can think clearly. his plans may have crumbled to the ground, but that is where it's safe: ryo hadn't realized that he'd been up in the air this whole time, soaring on the updrafts of dreams of nights with yamapi, of dreams of futures with yamapi. he feels grounded now that the progression of their relationship is hindered by the circumstances of their lives. it makes it seem more real, somehow. that fate is something that moves at a glacier's pace, fueled by nonrenewable sources of passion and initiative. that, ryo tells himself, is how men think. logical, rational, taking all the specifications and possible catastrophes into account.

still, he feels like flying whenever he thinks of yamapi.

to pass the time, he cleans his bedroom: makes his bed, arranges his closet, picks up the errant items of clothing on the floor, and it's only when ryo is halfway through refolding his linens that he realizes he's being quite optimistic, although a better word would be presumptuous. but then he snorts, goes back to folding his linens and fluffing his pillows: he is ryo nishikido (and ryo nishikido is damn fine and who wouldn't) and yamapi is yamapi (and yamapi is kind of easy and, again, who wouldn't).

later, he still has hours. ryo exchanges text messages with koyama and yasuda, but when his line of vision becomes clouded with visions of sparkling hearts and penguins, he shuts off his phone and participates in a staring contest with the blank screen of his television. with a rather vindictive push of a button, ryo forces his opponent into defeat and the television screen lights up. it's the news, but not the kind he's paid to be around, so he changes the channel. horse racing. rugby. some taiga drama. in the end, he settles on a channel with a clock in its bottom right corner and waits.

he orders food at some point. chinese takeout, because that's all that bastard deserves, ryo eats up his the fleeting traces of anger gleefully and chews on the fat just to savor it. then he lights a candle or two out of guilt and because pi would find the contrast between the elegant silver candles and the white boxes of takeout with tacky golden lettering on its side hilarious.

after another intensive waiting session, yamapi arrives, looking tired and sheepish. ryo doesn't stand up to greet him, says okaeri, and just sits on his side of the table and breaks the cheap, disposable chopsticks apart. yamapi takes the seat across him happily, digging in as he talks about his day. it doesn't feel like any date ryo's ever been on.

suddenly, the occasion does not seem too momentous. perhaps it is all ryo can expect after a series of circumstantial fuck ups and years of eating out and eating together. the reserves of magic and chemistry between them had been tapped out long before he could even begin to know how full they were. they had been doing this for so long without realizing and, in a way, ryo feels cheated out of a deal he got at a bargain price. anyway, ryo rationalizes, what good is a first date when you've already seen the girl naked?

the dinner, so far, is not different from most of the ones they shared: yamapi chatting aimlessly as he commences a vicious rapine of each dish, ryo picking at his vegetables and kicking his feet under the table, loud laughter sliding off their chopsticks and skittering onto the walls, ryo smiling too broadly and yamapi showing all his teeth. and like most of the meals they have had together, ryo inadvertently gets drunk.

ryo eyeballs him through the glare of his beer bottle against the candle light. the soft light plays upon the planes of pi's face, the wisps of hair caught in the reflected burn; pi almost looks golden. ryo worries the neck of his bottle between lip and teeth, swilling the drink from side to side as his gaze zeroes in on yamapi's mouth.

you know, ryo, in a brief moment of lucidity, tells himself, when he isn't stuffing his face with food or making dumb kissy faces, his lips are so fucking kissable. the words sound sweet in his head, charming and suave, so he says them to pi.

yamapi blinks, once, twice, before stuffing a whole dumpling into his mouth. he chews silently, regarding ryo with the barefaced suspicion that mothers pushing perambulators with babies in them have for strange men with no children who hang around playground parks.

thinking that his affections have been waylaid by the inherent slowness of yamapi's mind (a side effect of prolonged periods of akanishi's company, no doubt), ryo decides to make his sentiments clear, clears his throat:

"i want to kiss you."

"my contract with the jimusho clearly stipulates that there is to be no kissing," yamapi informs him serenely, polishing off the last bit of beer in his bottle, "unless it's being filmed in front of a drama crew of a couple dozen."

ryo's eyes narrow. "fuck off."

"no tongue allowed either," pi's glances at him briefly, sidelong and suspicious, "which, i suspect, doesn't fit in at all with your plans for tonight."

"plans? what plans? if you're talking about this feast i prepared for you then i'd say i've been the perfect gentleman all evening," ryo affecting to be hurt at yamapi's suggestion (even though he kind of really is) as he gestured at the opened boxes of chinese takeout. "i haven't done anything to deserve you using that kind of tone with me."

yamapi snorts and pushes past ryo's arm on the way to the bok choi, "first of all: it doesn't count as "preparation" when you order out," ryo begins to object, but yamapi silences him with a mouthful of the saucy green vegetable, "second: i even told you that i wanted pasta, but you said there weren't any good italian places that delivered," the consistency of the bok choi is counterproductive to ryo's desperate need to defend himself, "and third: you wouldn't be ryo nishikido if you didn't try something funny on the first date."

after a lot of frantic chewing, ryo manages to swallow. "so that means you do want me to do something?" he leers at yamapi.

yamapi is unperturbed as he attacks the spare ribs. "i'm just saying. i know you, ryo; i know the kind of girls you go out with. you're like one of pavlov's dogs. classical conditioning and shit. except instead of food, what gets you going is ass. and boobs."

both of which you just happen to have a lot of, thank god is what he really wants to say, but even ryo knows that if their date were a plane, hijacked by snark and yamapi's path of chinese takeout devastation, keeping it airborne would rely solely on him not saying that. so, he pauses for a moment, allows himself to look stupid for yamapi.

smitten as he is, ryo is still ryo in the same way the sneeze you've been trying to hold rips out from your nose like a hurricane:

"is that the shit you and kato talk about when you go drinking?"

yamapi makes a face, "he's a good kid, but he doesn't know when to shut up."

ryo laughs and yamapi laughs and it doesn't feel like any date ryo's ever been on. maybe it's the way the amber tint of his glass burns too brightly against the flickering orange tongue on its wick and his gaze wavers and snaps before staring too long into yamapi's eyes. maybe it's the way alcohol manages to burn the edge off of things like hand-eye coordination and inhibition but only sharpens the prod of emotion or nausea (the difference between the two, ryo has yet to determine) in his gut. maybe it's the way yamapi looks tonight. or the way yamapi looks at him.

for the first time that night, yamapi set down his chopsticks and his hand sits on the table top, palm-down and inviting. ryo pushes aside the paralysis-inducing hysteria, the butterflies, the thought that this is so god damn gay, and places his hand on top of yamapi's. turns it over and feels their bones shift in unison underneath the soft skin. he laces their fingers together atop a greasy paper napkin and feels the sudden jump in yamapi's pulse, feels the warmth pooling in the pocket of air between their palms.

(it feels like home.)

he tries again:

"i really really want to kiss you."

pi just stares at him under heavy-lidded eyes and thick eyelashes, smiling, won't reveal anything that ryo doesn't already know, "what's for dessert?"

he doesn't withdraw his hand.

-

the next day at work, everything is different, but ryo doesn't understand why -

(- yamapi won't look at him, can't seem to stand to be in the same room as him, the same group as him, why yamapi seems not to know where to go, where to be amidst the very walls that reared him from childhood. the idea that yamapi could be lost when ryo himself begins to believe that he's found his way hurts more than ryo could have ever anticipated.)

ryo doesn't understand.

-

the night paints a heavy shade of black against the bright neon of tokyo, wraps them in a way that suggests intimacy, when it's really just shadow play. at this hour, shops have their grates locked and bolted and their windows shut, not a welcome sign in sight, but the trees still stretch their leafy arms, branches barely moving against the gentlest of winds.

tokyo never stops, but it does slow down.

yamapi, at least, does and in the plaintive silence afforded by a thriving metropolis, yamapi gives up the night to quiet contemplation. as he speaks, his words push out gusts of steam that rise into the air, disappearing into the night, like a prayer sent up to heaven.

people have always assumed that it's always just been the two of them, but with toma and jin, kanjani8 and uchi, there'd always be something wedged in between them, tokyo and osaka, postal codes and traffic signs apart. it's never been just the two of them, yamapi realizes, and the way they just came crashing together, like two planets ripped out of their orbits and set on a collison course, has yamapi seeing more and more of ryo, more and more of himself.

perhaps there's always been a reason why they've avoided becoming the smallest of prime numbers.

for most of his life, yamapi has been groomed to win over the most apathetic of crowds, thaw the most freezing of receptions; he's built a career out of unfavorable and uncomfortable situations (the consolidation of a ragtag bunch of juniors as a unit that overestimated its transience, a brand new persona to go hand-in-hand with the lofty ambitions that yamapi couldn't blame kame for having). consummate idol to the lengths of public mortification and the depths of an unconquered concert hall.

but it isn't like that with ryo.

(and that's the problem, really.)

ryo's famous for his poison tongue and even yamapi's been scalded at least once or twice. he's been known for words capable of burning bridges and sparking conflict and at first, yamapi was constantly trying to douse the firestorms that would flare up, issuing from ryo like a furnace. it never worked.

instead, he's built up a thicker skin over the years, a smile that could disarm ryo's famously short fuse, and the quiet certainty that in this world, ryo's really only ever been honest with him, even if he isn't all of the time.

it's that certainty that bewilders yamapi.

because this this, yamapi doesn't understand why ryo's so sure about it, about him, when he hasn't done anything to prove his worth. yamapi, who would always bet on himself against the odds, who would blaze a trail through uncharted territory, starts to consider all the reasons why not.

(the list is substantial: their careers, their reputations, the backlash, the collapse of everything they built themselves to become.)

the crescent moon hangs low, burning into the neon skyline of tokyo as it shines its own reflected light onto yamapi's path. the night wind whistles past yamapi's ears, through the locks of his hair; he imagines that it whispers an answer and it says yes, no, yes, yes, no.

-

what follows is a week of ryo paging through old drama scripts, doodling yamapi's name in the margins and sketching deformed hearts around them. as convicted as he may be in his feelings, ryo is easily discouraged at the lack of reciprocal contact and wouldn't dare start a conversation that actually means something. yamapi barely associates with him these days, refusing to revert back to behavior tht was common between them even before ryo's romantic overtures. yamapi barely glances in his direction, doesn't knock elbows with him during lunch breaks, won't cross their ankles together when they're sitting on the same couch. on the rare occasion that ryo catches his gaze, yamapi's eyes don't reveal anything. no flashes of disgust, none of love or affection, just the blank vacancy that is glossed over in magazine photographs. ryo hates that.

ryo, without anything better to do and refusing to wallow in idle pining, decides he needs a creative outlet through which his angst and despair may be communicated. he gets a hold of shige's school supplies and suddenly there are comic strips of him and yamapi running off together to live in hawaii to start their own surfing shop in oahu in neon highlighter ink scrawled atop a very important scene, where nagasawa masami finally decides to leave his character.

"you're pathetic." jun tells him, after reading the riveting third installment of ryo and yamapi's life as the proprietors of beach angel. they're out on one of their strictly platonic man dates, hovering like parentheses around a large, steaming bowl of yakiniku that ryo promises to pay for. normally, ryo wouldn't ask him out (for the sake of his reputation, he'd rather not be known as the Homicidal Idol, as meals with jun usually rouse rather morbid inclinations), but he needs someone in whom his singleness is mirrored and whose cynicism and - he's willing to concede - bitchiness exceeds his, because he doesn't think he could handle koyama's advice to "cry it out" or nino enumerating the joys and wonders of monogamy (except maybe ohno would appreciate the comic).

what ryo needs is a shoulder to bitch and moan on, advice nestled like a tiny explosive in the niche of a well-aimed insult, a helping hand that's likely to slap back once it's been bitten. jun offers help, the kind where ryo can pretend he was made to jump through hoops of fire and jun's a good enough friend, a kindred spirit, who understands his need and humors him.

"no, no i'm not," ryo furrows his brow as he examines the inking of the third panel where he manages the finances of the store while yamapi charms the customers into buying homemade board wax. "you're stuck selling socks in a department store in okinawa after johnny finds out you've been sucking cock recreationally all this time and fires your sodomizing ass. that's pathetic."

a vein pulses against the plane of jun's forehead, his jaw wired tight, clenched. ryo doesn't stop talking.

"you're actually the reason why pi and i decided to run away together."

". . . please don't tell me that i actually exist in this disturbing parallel dimension."

"you're just a passing footnote, don't worry." ryo smiles, nasty as ever, "but we're very grateful."

"you know, we've been taking bets on how long before yamashita puts out," jun informs him, relishing in the way ryo bristles at the mysterious pronoun. "i'm personally banking on never when he realizes the kind of crazy you've been afflicted with."

ryo scoffs, "what? is that why all your boyfriends end up leaving you?"

jun doesn't miss a beat, "not before i've fucked them into the mattress, at least."

ryo blanches, fingers and knuckles twitching and sore from overuse after what seems like eons of yamapi imposed celibacy.

"the idea of you fucking someone: haha, right." he tries weakly.

jun just laughs. "pathetic. you need to get laid asap."

"so what if i am?" ryo asks miserably into his soup. "any day now. i can feel it."

ryo points his spoon towards jun and splatters him with flyaway droplets of soup as he shakes it in his face for emphasis.

"he's giving it up. hard."

jun snorts. ryo is clearly underestimating yamapi's ability to discern a calculated risk from a reckless one. through years of training to become an idol, yamapi has been easing himself into a world where the pleasures and benefits are always double-edged, laced with temptations of skin and vice that even one as infallible as he was not privy to. yamapi had been careful up until this point; the strain of this lifelong juggling act never showing on his face, complexion bearing no signs of asceticism that any outsider could conclude there was no desire yamapi possessed that could not be fulfilled by the lifestyle of an idol and the natural ability to make people happy. except now desire has found him, has worked its way into its body like an inscrutable contagion, has awakened dormant limbs and nerve paths as it travels through the knobs of his vertebrae, boils his blood in such a way that sends his heart racing. yamapi is still trying to acclimatize to the sudden shift of forces within him. jun wouldn't be surprised if ryo's feelings remained as they were: not exactly unrequited, but ultimately unfulfilled and unanswered.

still, ryo is his friend - somehow, in some way - so he broaches the topic with caution.

"what makes you so sure?"

ryo is thoughtful for a moment, silent, which means he's thinking of alternatives to the truth. or at least ways to mask it and protect the scraps of dignity he swears he has left. still, the sappy fluttery feelings refuse to leave him and matsujun is kind of depressing company.

"because i could go through every letter of the alphabet, but i'd still end up at pi."

jun's reaction is instantaneous, drawing curious glances from the other patrons as he manages to snort and wheeze and slap his knee simultaneously. "that's terrible," he says, wrinkling his nose. "what does that even mean?"

"i don't know, i don't know," ryo cradles his head in his hands and refuses to look at jun.

"no matter how much you want yamashita's ass, i say you need to get some - anyone - before this," he gestures towards ryo's entire pathetic being, "becomes permanent."

ryo scowls, "if that's your own sick and twisted way of propositioning me, then no thank you."

"seriously, ryo, you've known pi for over half your life and you two have probably loved each other for more than half that time," jun says, trying to disarm ryo's arsenal of defenses and fortified walls. "you may have kicked your feelings up a degree higher, but pi - he has to have his reasons. maybe he doesn't want to get into it with you. not if it means unsettling the dynamic of your group and potentially destroying a good working relationship. i don't doubt your feelings or anything, but what if you two fight and breakup or if this gets out to the press? you may not have considered these things, but i bet yamapi's spent the past week thinking about them."

a strange silence falls between them, not heavy with condensed saliva spent trading insults or doused with the flammability of alcohol, the usual fare. ryo is contemplative and jun thinks that this is what being a good sempai must feel like. respect for the confucian reverence towards relationships between seniors and their juniors suddenly blossoms within jun and he realizes that apart from treating his kouhai out to meals and deflating his ego once in a while, he has to ask the questions that ryo cannot avoid answering.

how many more people in your life can you stand to lose?

finally, ryo decides.

"i'll talk to him tonight."

-

yamapi is surprisingly pliant when ryo bundles him into his car and drives them all the way to yamapi's apartment. sure, he spends most of the time avoiding ryo's eyes and emitting put-upon sighs, but he's there and ryo considers the first part of his plan a success.

the next part of the plan is crucial and requires a significant amount of balls that, for once, ryo is afraid he won't be able to muster.

the situation calls for delicacy and tact, dignity and diplomacy.

noticeably lacking in all aspects, ryo opts for the direct approach.

"what the fuck is wrong with you?"

"ryo -"

"no, fuck, i get to talk first after days of you living in blissful ignorance of my existence." yamapi falls silent. "it's just that. it's just i don't understand why. why when you could have said no if you didn't feel the same why? why when you didn't even want to in the first place?"

yamapi won't say anything, not when ryo tells him not to talk. sometimes yamapi doesn't know how to be a good friend without prompting.

"i wouldn't have. you know i'd never." for a brief terrifying moment, ryo is choked up, so full of everything that's been leading up to this moment and all the volatile emotion rushing up at once has ryo grasping in the air for anything to hold onto, anything solid. "it was never all about me, asshole. you didn't have to say yes just to spare my feelings; i'm a big boy, i could have taken it."

for a long moment, yamapi doesn't say anything.

ryo decides fuck it all and pulls yamapi towards him, crushes their mouths together.

the moment it happens, a kaleidoscope of possibilities shatters in yamapi's mind and, in an instant, he and reality are
face to face without the distorting barriers of mirrors and colored glass wedged between them. he reconciles himself with
the notion that he has, in fact, thought about this before, and, now, feeling ryo's scowl smoothening into a smile against his own, he decides briefly that expectation cannot even begin to encompass reality.

ryo's tongue is sharp, but it is soft in yamapi's mouth. yamapi used to think that a kiss with ryo would leave him with a
mouth full of blood and a lacerated tongue, but ryo paints the alignment of his teeth, the concave walls of his mouth, the
trembling line of his lips with a dexterity that suggests an artist's virtuosity and a languorous heat that confuses
passion for love. except it is, it is, ryo swears it in every tremor of his lips. it's a strange kind of chemical
that works its way into yamapi's system; it fills the walls of his veins, sets the nerve endings of his fingertips on fire,
makes his toes curl into themselves, thinks that maybe okay, okay, maybe i can. he feels ryo tremble underneath his hands that have somehow made it to ryo's hips, tracing the edges of his shirt, before he feels nothing at all and just sees ryo wild-eyed, letting the misplaced distance fill the spaces in between them again.

"i don't know what you want me from me." he says, panting, clutching at the creases in his shirt. yamapi is distracted by the knowledge that he put the deep red flush painted on ryo's neck.

"i wouldn't want you to think i'm easy."

ryo's jaw unhinges.

"i've known you for over ten years and you still haven't put out - i'd say you've made things pretty difficult already."

yamapi scrunches up his nose, "so romantic."

"see, that's what i don't get," and something that feels like real anger expands the walls of his veins, sets the nerve endings of his fingertips on fire. "i don't know what you want me from me. i don't know what you want or what the problem is and i can't not anymore."

yamapi shrugs off ryo's rage, lets it pass beyond him like a fine mist, coming out of it clear-faced and honest. he looks ryo straight in the eyes and ryo wonders how he ever missed the passion sparking through their flimsy opacity.

"yamapi, please."

yamapi takes a breath. without breaking the severe glare-on he's been keeping for a while now, ryo feels his heart skip and stutter and stop when yamapi says,

"i know who i am when i'm with you. i think that's what scares me the most."

"i -"

yamapi's eyes flash as if to say not yet, "people out there, they don't know who i am, what i'm like, not really anyway," yamapi averts his eyes, focuses on the pattern of the carpet beneath his shoes. "you know me too well for me to try and impress you, win you over - i can't. i don't think. i'm not comfortable being myself," yamapi stutters, awkward, and ryo knows how difficult this is for him to say, even if he doesn't quite understand it just yet. "i guess it's because i'm not used to it. being myself, not having to - do anything. i just - fuck, i'm screwing this up. you, you don't know what i want from you, because i can't even fathom what it is you see in me when i'm so - i used to pass wind in your face when we were kids, ryo, hell, i think i did last week when you were sleeping. i eat food that's been on the floor longer than five seconds, leave my dirty socks in my shoes for weeks, i never turn off the tv even when i'm not watching and you hate that. any of my ex-girlfriends would have left sooner if i'd done all that when i was with them, but you - i - you've seen me at my worst and i can't fucking - i don't understand why. why me?"

yamapi's voice strains into the static silence. a plethora of thoughts and premises swarms through ryo's mind and he grabs at the nearest wave of uncalibrated emotion and sinks into it.

"you," ryo begins, voice even, nose slightly flaring, "you fucking asshole. if you think, for even a moment, that i'd be the girl between us, just look down and try to see your feet over your ridiculously large manboobs."

"ryo -"

"you're such a fucking girl, yamapi! that whole rant was proof," ryo's pretty sure that he's being an asshole, but he can't stop himself. "i don't know how to be myself - why me? boo hoo hoo. fuck yeah, you're right. why you?" the ways his voice trails off into a tone bordering tender, contemplative surprises him, even though it shouldn't. he looks yamapi in the eyes, finds him looking back. they hold their gazes the way they hold hands. "why you when you're always late, always hungry, when you constantly obsess about what to put on your nikki, when your feet are cold in the morning and when your hair is awful. why you, when you're so distracting that you're all i can fucking think about sometimes, when i can't go a single day without seeing your stupid face, hearing your stupid voice. why, why you, when you're so fucking perfect."

ryo blinks and it's as if yamapi's lips have always been bruised and moist and right there. yamapi is suddenly so close that their chests brush and ryo stamps out the urge to snicker. not now.

yamapi smiles, i get it now and closes the last few centimeters between them until there's no air, no distance. just heat, friction, something electric that snaps through their bodies, a current binding them together.

words like love frighten yamapi, but when ryo threads his fingers through his "awful" hair, lays a hand over the battledrum beat of his heart, any fear is bellied by how grand the feeling actually is. yamapi decides, in the brief space of time it takes for ryo to rid him of his shirt and make it to his bedroom, that there's a finish line drawn at a distance approaching forever and the two of them are going to make it together.